Stock Market

The following article written by Brandon Smith was originally published at Alt-Market.com.

I have been saying it for years and I will say it again here — stocks are the worst possible “predictive” signal for the health of the general economy because they are an extreme trailing indicator. That is to say, when stock markets do finally crash, it is usually after years of negative signs in other more important fundamentals.

Of course, whether we alternative analysts like it or not, the fact of the matter is that the rest of the world is psychologically dependent on the behavior of stock markets. The masses determine their economic optimism (if they are employed) according to the Dow and the S&P and, to some extent, by official and fraudulent unemployment statistics. When equities start to dive, society takes notice and suddenly becomes concerned about fiscal dangers they should have been worried about all along.

Well, it may have taken a couple months longer than I originally predicted, but it would seem so far that a moment of revelation (that slap in the face I discussed a couple weeks ago) is upon us. In less than a few days, most of the gains in global stocks for 2018 have been erased. The question is, will this end up as a “hiccup” in an otherwise spectacular bull market bubble? Or is this the inevitable death knell and the beginning of the implosion of that bubble?

After I predicted the election of Donald Trump, I also predicted that central banks would begin pulling the plug on life support for equities markets. This did in fact take place with the Fed’s continued program of interest rate increases and the reduction of their balance sheet, which effectively strangles the flow of cheap credit to banking and corporate institutions that fueled stock buybacks for years. Without this constant and ever expansionary easy fiat, there is nothing left to act as a crutch for stocks except perhaps blind faith. And blind faith in the economy always ends up being smacked down by the ugly realities of mathematics.

I believe the latest extraordinary dive in stocks is NOT a “hiccup,” but a sign that “contagion” is still a thing, and also a trailing sign of instability inherent in our fiscal system. Here are some reasons why this trend is likely to continue.

Historic Corporate Debt Levels

As mentioned above, artificially low interest rates have allowed corporations incredible leeway to manipulate stock markets at will using stock buybacks and other methods. However, there are still consequences for this strategy. For example, corporate debt levels are now at historic annual highs; far higher even than debt levels just before the crash of 2008.

If this doesn’t illustrate the falseness of the so called “economic recovery”, I don’t know what does. Beyond that, what happens as the Fed continues to raise interest rates and all that debt held by the “too big to fails” becomes vastly more expensive? Well, I think we are seeing what happens. Over time, faith in the corporate ability to prop up equities will erode, and a considerable decline is built directly into the farce.

Price To Earnings Ratio

In some of her final statements upon stepping down as the head of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen had some choice comments about the state of equities markets. These included statements that stock market valuations were high and that the price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 (the ratio of stock values versus actual corporate earnings per share) were at a historical peak. This fits exactly with the policy shift I warned about in 2017, and my assertion that Jerome Powell will be the Fed chairman to oversee the final crash of the post-bailout market bubble.

The spike in P/E ratios is not only taking place in U.S. markets. For example, the same trend can be observed in countries like India. Meaning, there are equities valuation problems around the world.

The issue here is that corporate earnings do not justify such high stock prices. Therefore, something else must be inflating those prices. That something was, of course, central bank stimulus, and now that party is almost over, whether the “buy the f’ing dippers” want to admit it yet or not.

10-Year Treasury Yield Spike

Have spiking Treasury bond yields actually been a signal for an “accelerating economy” as mainstream economists often suggest? Not really. In the era of central bank monetary manipulation, it is more likely that yields were spiking because markets are anticipating the arrival of Jerome Powell as Fed chair and accelerating interest rate hikes rather than an accelerating economy.

The notion that the economy itself might be “overheating” in 2018 is a rather new and nefarious propaganda meme being used by central bankers to set a particular narrative. I believe that narrative will be the claim that “inflation” is a key concern rather than deflation and that central banks must act to temper inflation with more aggressive rate increases. In reality, what we are seeing is not “inflation” in a traditional sense, but stagflation. That is to say, we are seeing elements of price inflation in necessary goods and services and well as property markets, but continued deflation in the rest of the economy.

The Fed in particular will continue to ignore negative fundamentals because they are seeking to deliberately pop the market bubble they have created.

The spike in 10-year bond yields seems to be correlating closely to the recent volatility in stocks. This volatility increased exponentially as yields neared the 3% mark, which appears to be the magical trigger point for equities failure. Though yields suffered a modest decline as stocks tumbled this week, I still recommend keeping an eye on this indicator.

Dollar Weakness

As I have mentioned in recent articles, there has been a strange disconnect between interest rates and the U.S. dollar. As the Fed continues its policy of hiking interest rates, generally the dollar index should rise in response. Instead, the dollar has been swiftly falling, only stalling in the past couple of trading sessions. If the dollar index continues to fall even as stocks decline and rates increase, this may suggest a systemic risk to the dollar itself.

Such risk could include a dollar dump by foreign central banks in favor of a wider basket of currencies, or the SDR trading basket created by the IMF.

Balance Sheet Reductions Accelerating

The Fed’s most recent release of data on its balance sheet reduction program shows a drop in holdings of $18 billion; this is far higher that the originally planned $12 billion slated by the Fed. Meaning, the Fed is dumping its balance sheet holdings much faster than it told the public initially.

Why is this important? Well, if you have been tracking the behavior of stocks over the past few years as well as the increases in the Fed’s balance sheet, you know that stock markets have risen in direct correlation with that balance sheet. In other words, the more purchases the Fed made, the higher stocks climbed.

If this correlation is directly linked, then as the Fed reduces its balance sheet, stocks should fall.

So, the fed announces its latest round of balance sheet reductions on January 31st, the reduction is much higher than anticipated, and within a week we witness the largest two day market drop in years. You would think this observation might just be important, but if you look at the mainstream economic media, almost NO ONE is mentioning it. Instead, they are searching for all sorts of random explanations for what just happened, none of which are very logically satisfying.

I believe that the Fed will not only continue its program of interest rate increases even if stocks begin to flounder, but that they will also unload their balance sheet as quickly as possible.

Corporate Investor Comments

Major corporate investment firms are beginning to raise their voices about the potential not only for stock devaluations, but also the amount that they might fall. Sydney-based AMP capital suggested a rather moderate 10% pullback in equities, which I think will become the talking point for most of the mainstream media over the next couple weeks. At least, until the whole thing comes crashing down much further than that.

The head of Blackstone COO expects stocks to fall at least 20% this year, a much more aggressive number but not high enough in my view.

I still believe these kinds of estimates are only applicable in the very short term. By the end of 2018, it is possible that markets will double the worst estimated declines predicted by the mainstream investment world given the fundamentals.

Central Banker Comments

Comments by agents of the Federal Reserve reinforce the notion that the central bank is about to crush the bull market bubble. San Francisco branch head Robert Kaplan has been quoted as saying the Fed may be required to hike interest rates MORE than the three times expected by mainstream economists in 2018.

As noted above, Janet Yellen’s exit statements were decidedly “hawkish,” suggesting that property markets and stocks are overpriced. On top of this, Jerome Powell, the new Fed chair, has been quoted in Fed documents from 2012 (finally released this past month) discussing the market bubble the Fed had created and the need to temper that bubble. In other words, Powell is the perfect man for the job of imploding stocks. Powell even predicted in 2012 that when the Fed raises rates the reaction by stock markets might be severe. Interesting that markets would plunge the very first day Powell assumes the Fed chair position.

I suppose finally a Fed agent and I have something in common. We’ve both been predicting the same exact market outcome caused by the same trigger event for around the same number of years.

In essence, Powell is being portrayed by the mainstream media as “Trump’s guy,” and the change in Fed leadership is now being referred to as “Trump’s Fed.” This is not random rhetoric. I can’t think of ANY other president in the past that was given credit by the mainstream media for the activities of the Federal Reserve. Trump’s control over the Federal Reserve is zero. But, the actions of the Fed over the course of this year will undoubtedly crash the very equities markets that Trump has been foolishly taking credit for since his election.

The real issue here now is, how fast will this ugly festering sore explode? That’s hard to say. I would not be surprised if markets fall about 20% below recent highs in the course of the next couple of months and then stall. We may even see a couple spectacular bounces in the near term, all set to trumpets and fanfare by the mainstream economic media who will proclaim that the latest shock-drop was nothing more than an “anomaly.” Then, the crash will continue into the end of 2018 and panic will ensue.

That said, if there is some kind of major geopolitical crisis (such as a war with North Korea), then all bets are off. Stocks could crash exponentially over the course of a few weeks rather than a year. As the past few days have proven, stocks are not invincible, not in the slightest. And all the gains accumulated in the span of years can be wiped away in an instant.

About the author:Brandon Smith is the founder of the Alternative Market Project, an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for barter and mutual aid. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the unstable mainstream system and build something better. You can contact Brandon Smith at: [email protected]

TheEconomicCollapse| Will the financial bubble that has been rapidly growing ever since Donald Trump won the election suddenly be popped once he takes office? Could it be possible that we are being set up for a horrible financial crash that he will ultimately be blamed for?

Yesterday, I shared my thoughts on the incredible euphoria that we have seen since Donald Trump’s surprise victory on November 8th. The U.S. dollar has been surging, companies are announcing that they are bringing jobs back to the U.S., and we are witnessing perhaps the greatest post-election stock market rally in Wall Street history. In fact, the Dow, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 all set new all-time record highs again on Thursday. What we are seeing is absolutely unprecedented, and many believe that the good times will continue to roll as we head into 2017.

What has been most surprising to me is how well the stocks of the big Wall Street banks have been doing. It is no secret that those banks poured a tremendous amount of money into Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Donald Trump had some tough things to say about them leading up to election day.

So you wouldn’t think that it would be particularly good news for those banks that Trump won the election. However, we seem to be living in “Bizarro World” at the moment, and in so many ways things are happening exactly the opposite of what we would expect. Since Trump’s victory, all of the big banking stocks have been skyrocketing…

Financial stocks in particular have been on fire. Citigroup (C) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) are up about 20% since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton — and that makes them laggards!

Morgan Stanley (MS) has gained more than 25%. So has troubled Wells Fargo (WFC), despite the lingering fallout from its fake account scandal. Bank of America (BAC) is up more than 30%.

And so is Goldman Sachs (GS) — the former employer of both Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin and Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.

But are these stock prices justified by the fundamentals?

Of course not, but during times of euphoria the fundamentals never seem to matter much. Stocks were incredibly overvalued before the election, and now they are ridiculously overvalued.

Earlier today, a CNBC article pointed out that the cyclically-adjusted price to earnings ratio has only been higher than it is today at three points in our history…

“The cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE), a valuation measure created by economist Robert Shiller now stands over 27 and has been exceeded only in the 1929 mania, the 2000 tech mania and the 2007 housing and stock bubble,” Alan Newman wrote in his Stock Market Crosscurrents letter at the end of November.

Newman said even if the market’s earnings increase by 10 percent under Trump’s policies “we’re still dealing with the same picture, overvaluation on a very grand scale.”

And of course a historic stock market crash immediately followed each of those three bubbles.

Right now, the U.S. stock market is surging, with the Dow leaping toward 20,000, a number rooted in fiscal insanity and delusional expectations. There are no fundamentals that support a 20,000 Dow, but fundamentals have long since ceased to matter in a financial world hyperventilating on debt fumes while hallucinating about utopian economic models that will soon prove to generate fools instead of real wealth.

Today I’m going on the record with a prediction that I’ll offer with near absolute certainty: The rigged markets that now seem to defy gravity will be deliberately and destructively imploded under President Trump for all the obvious reasons. There will be financial chaos like we’ve never seen before: Investors leaping off tall buildings, banks declaring extended “holidays” that freeze transactions, and California pensioners slitting their wrists after they discover their promised pension funds were just vaporized by incompetent bureaucrats.

On the other hand, there are others that believe that Trump is just walking into a very bad situation and that a crash would be inevitable no matter who was president.

History tells us that there is no possible way that stock prices can stay at this irrational level indefinitely. But for now a wave of optimism is sweeping the nation, and many of those that are caught up in it will get seriously angry with you if you try to inject a dose of reality into the conversation.

But like I said yesterday, let’s hope that the optimists are correct. A survey that was just taken of 600 business executives found that 62 percent of them were optimistic about the U.S. economy over the next 12 months.

Incredibly, that number was sitting at just 38 percent the previous quarter.

For the moment, business leaders seem to be quite thrilled that we have a business executive in the White House.

Hopefully Donald Trump’s business experience will translate well to his new position. And it is certainly my hope that he is as successful as possible.

But even during the campaign Trump talked about how stocks were in a giant bubble, and the euphoria that we have seen since his election victory has just made that bubble even larger.

Throughout U.S. history, every giant financial bubble has always ended very badly, and this time around will not be any exception.

Trump may get the blame for it when it bursts, but the truth is that the conditions for the coming crisis have been building for a very, very long time.

John Vibes| Earlier this month, it was reported that less than two weeks before the economic collapse of 2008, several members of Congress took their money out of the stock market. Many high ranking government employees were given a heads-up about the impending market crash in secret meetings with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Then they used that information to engage in insider trading.

It was revealed that Senator Shelley Capito and her husband sold $350,000 worth of Citigroup stock at $83 per share, just one day before the stock dropped to $64 per share. Another shady trader was Congressman Jim Moran, who had his biggest trading day of the year days after the secret meeting, sellings stock in nearly 100 different companies.

These actions would be illegal for any American in any other circumstance, but members of Congress and high-ranking government officials are actually exempt from insider trading laws.

Years later, a 60 minutes investigation aired on television which highlighted the government’s deep history of insider trading. The investigation sparked outrage, prompting Congress to pass “the STOCK Act” which was said to hold members of the government to the same standards as any American when it came to insider trading.

However, Congress watered down the bill and changed key elements that would hold them accountable, allowing them to return to business as usual, and escape any consequences for their prior crimes.

In an interview during the 60 minutes investigation, Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institute told Steve Kroft that “It’s really the way the rules have been defined. And the people who make the rules are the political class in Washington and they’ve conveniently written them in such a way that they don’t apply to themselves.”

“These meetings were so sensitive– that they would actually confiscate cell phones and Blackberries going into those meetings. What we know is that those meetings were held one day and literally the next day Congressman Bachus would engage in buying stock options based on apocalyptic briefings he had the day before from the Fed chairman and treasury secretary. I mean, talk about a stock tip,” he added.

Since it was passed, the STOCK Act has been more or less worthless. Whenever a politician is accused of anything, they are defended by other politicians and the investigation is immediately stonewalled. For example, a former staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee, Brian Stutter was guilty of insider trading. However, he avoided charges because House Speaker John Boehner refused to hand over the evidence, and claimed that Sutter had legal immunity.

It seems that America operates on two different sets of laws – one set for those who claim to rule us, and another for everyone else.

And very obviously the fear of something big approaching is not confined to those on the fringes, because mainstream investors are now losing confidence on an almost unprecedented level.

Right now it is big news that the stock market just took one of its biggest tumbles in recent history, while oil prices plummeted back down to historical lows, touching below $40 per barrel. CNBC reports:

The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 400 points as nearly all blue chips declined. In the last five years, the index has only had four instances with closing losses of more than 400 points.

[…]

Oil reversed Thursday’s late gains to briefly fall below $40 a barrel to $39.86 for the first time since March 2009.

[…]

“Right now there is a feeling of fear in the marketplace and all news is interpreted negatively and it’s interpreted indiscriminately,” said Tom Digenan, head of U.S. equities as UBS Global Asset Management.

[…]

“I think uncertainty about China (and) general negativity is weighing on the market. There’s a lack of positive economic news to motivate buyers,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds.

China’s economic troubles, now dragging down its manufacturing sector, carry a major risk of spilling over into western markets, and the Federal Reserve has all but admitted that it is has run out of ammo to artificially prop up the U.S. market. QE3 has failed, and the negative effects of a zero interest rate are reaching a tipping point. Meanwhile, the currency wars are heating up across the globe.

Are things headed over a cliff?

USA Today expounded upon the significance of the lowest oil price in more than 6 years, as overproduction is forcing oil and drilling businesses go belly up, in turn threatening to liquidate millions of jobs and undermine the market:

Oil prices dipped below $40 a barrel Friday for the first time in 6 ½ years on the prospect of falling global demand, busting through a key threshold that could signal further declines and market turmoil… some analysts say the drop below $40 likely portends an additional slide into the $30s and continued weakness in the short term.

[…]

Further pushing down prices was a government report that U.S. oil inventories unexpectedly rose last week.

[…]

“It’s a very important psychological level,“ says Phil Flynn, senior energy analyst with the Price Futures Group. “It really signals that the global economy is in trouble.”

There is surely more to come in this unfortunate drama… but already, today’s numbers are showing that a very real fear has set in about how bad things have become, and how quickly it could all come unglued.

Michael Snyder| The idea that the United States is on the brink of a horrifying economic crash is absolutely inconceivable to most Americans. After all, the economy has been relatively stable for quite a few years and the stock market continues to surge to new heights.

Last Friday, the Dow and the S&P 500 both closed at brand new all-time record highs. For the year, the S&P 500 is now up 9 percent and the Nasdaq is now up close to 11 percent. And American consumers are getting ready to spend more than 600 billion dollarsthis Christmas season. That is an amount of money that is larger than the entire economy of Sweden.

So how in the world can anyone be talking about economic collapse?

Yes, many will concede, we had a few bumps in the road back in 2008, but things have pretty much gotten back to normal since then, right?

Why be concerned about economic collapse when there is so much stability all around us?

Unfortunately, this brief period of stability that we have been enjoying is just an illusion.

The fundamental problems that caused the financial crisis of 2008 have not been fixed. In fact, most of our long-term economic problems have gotten even worse.

But most Americans have such short attention spans these days. In a world where we are accustomed to getting everything instantly, news cycles only last for 48 hours and 2008 might as well be an eternity ago.

Without debt, very little economic activity happens. We need mortgages to buy our homes, we need auto loans to buy our vehicles and we need our credit cards to do our shopping during the holiday season.

So where does all of that debt come from?

It comes from the banks.

In particular, the “too big to fail banks” are the heart of this debt-based system.

Do you have a mortgage, an auto loan or a credit card from one of these “too big to fail” institutions? A very large percentage of the people that will read this article do.

And a lot of people might not like to hear this, but without those banks we essentially do not have an economy.

When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, it almost resulted in the meltdown of our entire system. The stock market collapsed and we experienced an absolutely wicked credit crunch.

Unfortunately, that was just a small preview of what is coming.

Even though a few prominent “experts” such as New York Times columnistPaul Krugmanhave declared that the “too big to fail” problem is “over”, the truth is that it is now a bigger crisis than ever before.

Just before the financial crisis hit, Wells Fargo & Co. had $609 billion in assets. Now it has $1.4 trillion. Bank of America Corp. had $1.7 trillion in assets. That’s up to $2.1 trillion.

And the assets of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the nation’s biggest bank, have ballooned to $2.4 trillion from $1.8 trillion.

At the same time that those banks have been getting bigger, 1,400 smaller banks have completely disappeared from the banking industry.

That means that we are now more dependent on these gigantic banks than ever.

At this point, the five largest banks account for42 percentof all loans in the United States, and the six largest banks account for67 percentof all assets in our financial system.

If someone came along and zapped those banks out of existence, our economy would totally collapse overnight.

So the health of this handful of immensely powerful banking institutions is absolutely critical to our economy.

Unfortunately, these banks have become deeply addicted to gambling.

Have you ever known people that allowed their lives to be destroyed by addictions that they could never shake?

Well, that is what is happening to these banks. They have transformed Wall Street into the largest casino in the history of the world. Most of the time, their bets pay off and they make lots of money.

But as we saw back in 2008, when they miscalculate things can fall apart very rapidly.

The bets that I am most concerned about are known as “derivatives“. In essence, they are bets about what will or will not happen in the future. The big banks use very sophisticated algorithms that are supposed to help them be on the winning side of these bets the vast majority of the time, but these algorithms are not perfect. The reason these algorithms are not perfect is because they are based on assumptions, and those assumptions come from people. They might be really smart people, but they are still just people.

If things stay fairly stable like they have the past few years, the algorithms tend to work very well.

But if there is a “black swan event” such as a major stock market crash, a collapse of European or Asian banks, a historic shift in interest rates, an Ebola pandemic, a horrific natural disaster or a massive EMP blast is unleashed by the sun, everything can be suddenly thrown out of balance.

Acrobat Nik Wallenda has been making headlines all over the world for crossing vast distances on a high-wire without a safety net. Well, that is essentially what our “too big to fail” banks are doing every single day.

With each passing year, these banks have become even more reckless, and so far there have not been any serious consequences.

But without a doubt, someday there will be.

What would you say about a bookie that took $200,000 in bets but that only had $10,000 to cover those bets?

As the major stock indices hit new record highs, many are left wondering how such a bull market can develop while the average worker faces layoffs, lower wages and rising costs.

The answer presents itself in the documented, admitted and openly acknowledged manipulations of the markets by governments, central bankers, and institutional banks.

In the age of quantitative easing and overt government intervention in the economy, it’s impossible to trust any of the economic statistics that we are being shown as indicators of the supposed health of our economy.

Whether it is GDP numbers, manufacturing data, inflation statistics or housing figures, all of the macroeconomic data that drives the financial news agenda are manipulated to suit the propagandistic purposes of the government and the central bankers.

Take 10 minutes and watch this excellent video featuring James Corbett below.

Financial analyst and trader, Gregory Mannarino says the new Iraq crisis is no accident. Mannarino says, “They are letting this happen on purpose. . . . We have an economy that needs to borrow cash into existence. It is built upon the acquisition of debt–period. This cash needs to be borrowed into existence and then dispersed. They don’t even care where it goes. If this mechanism becomes impeded in any way, the whole thing will collapse. We do not have a wealth based economic model. We have a debt based economic model. . . . The United States of America has been involved in more military conflicts than every other nation combined, multiple folds, why? It’s the mechanism, the U.S. dollar being the world reserve currency, needs to be borrowed into existence and then spent. So, the propagation of war is paramount with this type of an economic model.” Mannarino thinks, “I believe they allowed this thing to develop and this whole thing to come apart because this is part of the scheme to keep the whole thing propped up.”

Mannarino predicted this type of move a few years ago in a book he wrote titled “The Politics of Money.” Mannarino goes on to say, “This is a very dastardly and evil mechanism. The propagation of war, their next step in keeping this propped up. What people also don’t understand is the U.S. military is mandated to protect the oil of OPEC nations. Iraq is an OPEC nation. We have to get in there and do something. So, it is a set up. The whole thing is a complete setup to keep this propped up, and this is being done in collusion with the Federal Reserve, our policy makers and the industrial military complex. This has to be understood for what it is, and we have all known that war was in the cards for a long time, and we are starting to see it unfold now.”

It appears there is no urgency to stop this rout by al-Qaeda related terrorists in Iraq. Mannarino contends, “They need to sell this, and it’s already being sold on the mainstream media to the average person out there. What they are going to do on the mainstream media is start showing more brutal acts by these people to get the fear brewing in people’s minds. I would not be surprised and fearful of a false flag to get people to back another war over there.” Mannarino goes on to say, “This has to happen. This is in defense of the petro dollar . . . this is the basis of every single thing that is going on right now. This is to defend the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency, to defend the petro dollar.”

Mannarino goes on to say, “This is how we know we are at the very, very end of this entire thing. The European Central Bank is making the most desperate move possible with negative interest rates. The Federal Reserve will be following suit with something else, and I don’t know what, and we have the propagation of war to keep the dollar propped up. That is what this is. . . . But it won’t last.”

Massive fraud has been keeping the system propped up since “the party over moment” of the 2008 financial meltdown. Mannarino says, “It is so evident, the amount of fraud across the board is epic. We have never seen anything like this before. It wasn’t this bad during the credit derivative bubble that devastated the global economy, and it has gotten worse. Their goal is to prop things up, and they don’t care what reality is. Forget about the last credit derivative bubble, it is much, much worse now. This is distortion being created by the world’s central banks on purpose. That one metric is allowing fraud to bleed across every asset class.”

There is much, much more in the video interview so please be sure to listen. Thank you.

After the Interview:

Gregory Mannarino predicts, “I think we are going to get record high after record high in the stock market until the whole thing blows up.” If you would like to buy a copy of Mannarino’s book titled “The Politics of Money,” click here. (Look for a RED book cover on the right side of the page when you scroll down.) Click here for the Home page of TradersChoice.net.

Have you heard the one about the “economic recovery” in the United States? It’s quite funny, but it is not actually true. Every day, the establishment media points to the fact that global stock markets have soared to unprecedented heights as evidence that the economy is improving. But just because a bunch of wealthy people have gotten temporarily even richer on paper does not mean that the real economy is in good shape.

In fact, as you will see below, things just continue to get even tougher for the poor and the middle class. Retail stores are closing at the fastest pace since the fall of Lehman Brothers, the rate of homeownership in this country is the lowest that it has been in 19 years, one out of every five families do not have a single member that is employed, and one out of every five children is living in poverty.

We are working harder, earning less and going into more debt. With each passing day, the middle class gets a little bit smaller and the ranks of the poor get a little bit larger. But at least the stock market is doing great, eh?

If the U.S. economy really was doing well, government dependence would not be at epidemic levels.

If the U.S. economy really was doing well, the percentage of Americans that have a job would not be lower than it was when the last recession supposedly “ended”.

Nobody that takes an honest look at the numbers can honestly say that the U.S. economy has recovered. The following are 19 reasons why you can laugh when anyone tells you that the economy is in good shape…

#1 RadioShack just announced that it is going to close an additional 200 stores on top of what it was already planning to close.

#2 During the first quarter of this year, reported earnings by major U.S. retailers missed estimates by the largest margin in 13 years.

#3 One out of every three grocery store workers in the state of California is on some form of public assistance.

#4 The percentage of Americans that believe that it is a “good time to buy a home” is the lowest that it has been in four years.

#5 According to one recent survey, 52 percent of Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.

#6 Sadly, only 36 percent of American adults under the age of 35 currently own a home. That is the lowest level that has ever been recorded.

#7 According to one new study, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school.

#12 The average age of vehicles on America’s roads has hit an all-time high of 11.4 years. Are we making them better or is it just that people simply cannot afford to buy new vehicles anymore?

The most eye-opening measure of how poorly the vast majority are faring these days comes from comparing the periods after the Great Recession and the Great Depression.

The 90 percent, the vast majority, saw their income decline in 2012 compared with 2009, the year the Great Recession officially ended. Average annual income was down $556, or almost 2 percent, adjusted for inflation, to $30,997.

But in 1936, three years after the Great Depression ended, the vast majority enjoyed 31 percent more income than in 1933. The average increase, in today’s dollars, was $2,146 per household.

#14 The U.S. economy did not experience any economic growth during the first quarter of 2014. In fact, it actually contracted.

#15 The growth of furniture spending has just gone negative for the first time in about two years.

This is the 2007-2008 Crash all over again, but Ten Times WORSE! If you are still in this system for some reason, GET YOUR MONEY OUT!

IMF paper warns of ‘savings tax’ and mass write-offs as West’s debt hits 200-year high with means that they are going to increase taxation and destroy the middle class. IMF specifically mentions that the Western Nations have too much Debt.

In America today, there are close to 50 million people living in poverty and there are more than 100 million people that get money from the federal government every month.

As the middle class disintegrates, poverty is climbing to unprecedented levels. Even though the stock market has been setting record high after record high, the amount of anger and frustration boiling just under the surface in our nation grows with each passing day.

And now extended unemployment benefits have been cut off for 1.3 million unemployed Americans, and it is being projected that a total of 5 million unemployed Americans will lose their benefits by the end of 2014. In addition, as I have written about previously, 47 million Americans recently had their food stamp benefits reduced.

The conditions for a “perfect storm” are certainly being created. So how much longer will it be until we see all of this anger and frustration boil over in the streets of our major cities? Is America about to reach a breaking point?

If you think that the title of this article is “alarmist”, you probably have not been paying attention to what has been happening over the past few weeks. For example, a 600 person brawl broke out at at movie theater in Jacksonville, Florida just the other day…

Five teenagers were arrested when a 600-person brawl broke out in a Florida movie theater’s parking lot on Christmas night.

Described by police as a “melee,” the fight occurred around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday outside the Hollywood River City 14 movie theater in Jacksonville when a group tried to storm the theater’s doors without purchasing tickets, police said. Several had rushed an off-duty police officer working as a security guard.

The officer “administered pepper spray to disperse the group, locked the doors and called for backup, following protocol,” said Lauri-Ellen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

Soon after the pepper spray was used, “upward of 600 people moving throughout a parking lot about the size of a football field began fighting, disrupting and jumping on cars,” she said.

And a “flash mob” of “400 crazed teens” was so violent that it forced a mall in Brooklyn to shut down just a few days ago…

A wild flash mob stormed and trashed a Brooklyn mall, causing so much chaos that the shopping center was forced to close during post-Christmas sales, sources said Friday.

More than 400 crazed teens — who mistakenly thought the rapper Fabolous would perform — erupted into brawls all over Kings Plaza Shopping Center in Mill Basin on Thursday at 5 p.m., sources said.

The troublemakers looted and ransacked several stores as panicked shoppers ran for the exits and clerks scrambled to pull down metal gates.

In addition, the release of new Air Jordan sneakers caused mini-riots and brawls to break out all over the country just before Christmas.

So why is all of this happening?

Of course people will come up with all sorts of theories to explain these outbreaks of violence, but what pretty much everyone should be able to agree on is that we are seeing levels of anger and frustration rise to very dangerous levels in this country.

Right now, there are approximately 6 million Americans in the 16 to 24-year-old age group that are not in school and that are not working either. What that means is that we have an alarmingly high number of very frustrated young people that do not have anything better to do than to cause trouble.

In some of our largest cities this has become a massive problem. In fact, quite a few major U.S. cities actually have more than 100,000 “idle youth” living in them…

Just look at some of the nation’s largest cities. Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Riverside, Calif., all have more than 100,000 idle youth, the Opportunity Nation report found.

But the Obama administration says that this should not be a problem. In fact, the Obama administration tells us that the unemployment rate has been steadily “declining” and that there are plenty of opportunities for everyone.

Of course that is a giant lie. Just before the last recession, about 63 percent of all working age Americans had a job. During the recession that number fell below 59 percent and it has stayed there ever since…

So the notion that we are experiencing an “employment recovery” is absolutely laughable.

But most of our politicians appear to believe this lie, and it is being used as justification to cut off extended unemployment benefits.

And the funny thing is that by cutting off these benefits, it is going to make it appear as though unemployment has gone down even more. Millions of unemployed workers that are being forced into the streets will now be counted as having “left the labor force”, and it is being projected that the unemployment rate could decline by as much as half a percentage point as a result.

What a joke.

“Not all of us have savings and a lot of us have to take care of family because of what happened in the economy,” said Walker, of Santa Clarita, who said she has applied for at least three jobs a week and shares an apartment with her unemployed son, his wife and two children. “It’s going to put my family and me out on the streets.”

So what is she going to do?

Well, at this point she appears to be down to just one option…

“I just don’t know what to do, except pray.”

And of course the unemployed are not the only ones that have had their benefits cut. As I mentioned above, all 47 million Americans that are currently on food stamps recently had their benefits reduced. The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Mac Slavo…

Earlier this year government benefits for nutritional assistance were reduced after the expiration of emergency legislation that was enacted following the 2008 financial collapse. Nearly all of the 48 million people receiving food stamp distributions were affected. The move led to warnings from food pantries and recipients around the country who said that the $40 billion in cuts would leave many American families without the ability to put food on dinner tables across America. According to Feed America, the roughly $29 per family that would no longer appear on their EBT cards will amount to about 1.5 billion meals in 2014.

The fact that government dependence has soared to all-time highs even in the midst of this so-called “economic recovery” is just another sign that the middle class is dying. For years, middle class families have tried strategy after strategy in an attempt to survive, but now it has become apparent that the middle class is rapidly approaching a breaking point…

Rising income inequality is starting to hit home for many American households as they run short of places to reach for a few extra bucks.

As the gap between the rich and poor widened over the last three decades, families at the bottom found ways to deal with the squeeze on earnings. Housewives joined the workforce. Husbands took second jobs and labored longer hours. Homeowners tapped into the rising value of their properties to borrow money to spend.

Those strategies finally may have run their course as women’s participation in the labor force has peaked and the bursting of the house-price bubble has left many Americans underwater on their mortgages.

And even though the Obama administration and the mainstream media have tried to convince us over and over that the economy is “getting better”, most Americans are not buying it. In fact, according to a new CNN poll, 70 percent of all Americans believe that “the economy is generally in poor shape”.

As the economy continues to decline, not all Americans will respond to their desperate situations by getting violent. Many suffer quietly, hoping that things will eventually turn around for them. Unfortunately, the ranks of the suffering grow with each passing year. For example, a recent CNN article discussed the continued growth of “tent cities” all over America…

The total number of homeless people residing in tents and makeshift homes is unknown. Many of these communities are small and hidden from public view, while others claim hundreds of residents and are sprinkled through major urban areas.

Some, like those tucked under roadways, are temporary and relocate frequently. Their conditions are vile, unsanitary and fail to provide refuge from storms and winds. Then there are communities, such as Dignity Village in Portland, Oregon, that have a more sustained presence. The 13-year-old “ecovillage” set up by homeless people is hygienic and self-sufficient.

Preliminary findings by The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty show that tent cities have been documented in almost every state, and they’re growing.

So how do we solve these problems?

Are there any solutions that could get us out of this mess?

Of course there are. But don’t hold your breath waiting for any of them to be adopted. In fact, the American people continue to express great support for the very people that got us into this mess in the first place. For example, according to a Gallup survey that was just released, Barack Obama is the most admired man in America by a very wide margin and Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America by a very wide margin.

And the mainstream media will continue to tell all of us that “leaders” like Obama, Clinton, Reid, Boehner, McConnell and Pelosi can be trusted to get us out of this mess.

If you believe that, there is a bridge that I would like to sell you.

The American people need to stop having blind faith in the relentless propaganda that is being spewed at them through their televisions screens. The pretty faces that you see “reporting the news” do not care about you and they are not watching out for your best interests. The corporate-controlled news is highly scripted and it is pretty much the same whatever channel you turn to. If you have any doubt that “the news” is scripted, just check out this video …..

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About A Sheep No More

A Sheep No More is no longer plugged into the Matrix like the many sheep who are still programmed to believe that they have correct information provided by a varied and “independent media.” In fact the media is owned by 5 or 6 mega-media companies run by corporate advertising executives and Washington.